


Midnight Sun

by ombrophilia



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Spoilers, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 18:04:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ombrophilia/pseuds/ombrophilia
Summary: With newfound knowledge of Hydaelyn's nature, the Warrior of Light returns to her less than happy home in the Ala Mhigan Quarter to plan her next steps, hoping her feet will be strong enough to carry her alone.





	Midnight Sun

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off the reveal from end of the e3 shadowbringers trailer that yoshi-p will not stop teasing all of us about. tread carefully if you're avoiding shb spoilers. also playing fast and loose with the timeline here because eorzean time is fake and dumb. please enjoy this self-indulgence

Thordan was right.

What was she? What in the name of the Twelve _was_ E'dolha Tiasen? The Warrior of Light. The executor of Hydaelyn's will. An overflowing repository of aether and a shining beacon of hope to Ala Mhigo, to Ishgard, to Mor Dhona and Limsa Lominsa and every city-state in between. And she had seen this countless times before, had she not? All it took for primals to rise was belief and an ample amount of aether crystals, and she'd spent much of her early adventure awash in some of the most aether-dense chunks of shiny rock this realm had seen.

Part of her wanted so badly to deny the words of Solus zos Galvus. The founder of the Garlean empire. Her enemy, and nothing else. Imagine the benefit it would be to that foul tyrant to cast Hydaelyn's chosen into doubt like this, to pave the way for the rise of Zodiark or simply force the Warrior of Light to remove herself from battle entirely. To thrust upon her either the position of a god or the task of killing one of the highest gods without caring if there is any difference. She would be equally unwilling to cope with either. Wouldn't she?

With her head in her hands, E'dolha sat slumped against the wall of her home in the Ala Mhigan Quarter. She and the entire resistance had fought so valiantly to wrest control of all of this from the empire, and were the flame in her breast not doused so, she would be able to bring it back to life merely by walking outside and watching the sun rise over a freed people. A people still plagued by troubles small and large, ones which needed intervention from the Warrior of Light and ones which she could not begin to help with. Not that it mattered; with the proclamation from the long-thought-dead founder, she wanted very desperately to remain in this shard, but to leave Ala Mhigo behind. To start running again and hope that she could escape her own reputation.

Lhondi, her dear daughter of not more than two namedays by now, stayed safely at the Peering Stones. M'rahz had never seemed to object to having more children around, even if only for babysitting purposes, and with his help, E'dolha had long since changed her mind on the entire concept of nunhs. But she'd brought Lhondi there earlier in the day and thanked the Twelve that she had been able to keep her worry from her face as she explained that she needed time with Lhondi's other mom to discuss some things about fortifying Ala Mhigo or something otherwise blatantly transparent. Echo business. He understood, right? Of course he did. She was the Warrior of Light and he would do anything for her.

Remembering the conversation made her stomach lurch, but she'd lost her appetite long before she had returned to Gyr Abania, so at least there would be little to clean up if her body continued rebelling. If she fled now, she would have the chance to reinvent herself. Slink away to the Waking Sands and drape her body in a hooded cloak; Urianger had no need of his anymore and the more ill-fitting, the better. Book a room in Limsa Lominsa and call on Jandelaine. Strip the dye from her hair, hang it long and thick over one of her eyes. Leave behind the teachings of Jehantel, find a secluded place in the Bloodshore, and take up fishing. Never play or sing a note again, never pluck a bowstring, never raise an axe but to chop lumber. The Warrior of Light? Oh, she'd heard of them, but none can remember their face. You must be mistaken. You must be thinking of someone else. She's just a fisherwoman.

Her fists curled into balls and pressed into the rough-hewn stones, then pounded against them with rage that Estinien had taught her, however indirectly, how to channel. At least he had had the decency never to enjoy her company, for all the good that did him in the end. But Krile had been abducted and subjected to some of the most horrible experiments imaginable. Minfilia had been stolen from them by the very primal that E'dolha served. Ysayle had sacrificed herself to make a miserable point. House Fortemps had lost a son. Moenbryda. Tsuyu. Papalymo. Every Scion reflected in the shining, metallic gleam of Arenvald's armor. But they died valiantly, too, did they not? They knew the risks. She was the Warrior of Light and they would do anything for her.

E'dolha's legs moved, though she barely felt in control of them as she shuffled away to her shared bedchambers. She and her wife kept separate beds, close enough to remind each other of their presence but still with enough distance to allow personal space. Intimacy came with difficulty, even after the birth of their daughter, but it wouldn't be an issue much longer. She would leave. She would write a goodbye note, she would apologize profusely to her family, and she would run away. But her eyes, one pink one green, mismatched and distinct and unmistakable, widened as they were met with the piercing green of the only other person in the house. Sitting on E'dolha's bed, the woman she had chosen to spend her life with (whether the quarter liked it or not) stared back from behind longer hair, orange flecked with green.

"It's only ever when something's amiss that you send Lhondi away without telling me," she spoke, and though nobody could ever mistake her for anything but Ala Mhigan, her words lacked the cleaving edge she'd once been known for. "Sit down." Her hand touched the sheets (a housewarming gift from Redolent Rose) and she only pulled it back after E'dolha had begun walking.

Even after E'dolha sat down, she could feel the tip of her tail twitching back and forth. Her eyes looked down at her folded hands, the skin around her fingernails already torn up and rough, but she followed the implied direction. Took the implied opening. "To summon a primal," she began shakily, "We only need aether and belief. I've seen it happen over and over." But she was talking about things that her wife already knew. They both knew that. "Look at Tsukuyomi. Thordan. Shiva. Primals don't need to be summoned from nothing."

"Are you coming to a point, or are you trying to give me a lesson in harnessing aether?" her wife asked dryly. Of course, she would be in a far better place to command aether now than she had been when they met and the lesson wouldn't be unwelcome, but now was not the time.

E'dolha turned her head and couldn't return the tone. Her eyes still wide, her tail still twitching, she kept speaking, though she had the good sense not to repeat Solus zos Galvus' words directly. "I have aether, and I have the belief of all of Eorzea on my shoulders."

"Aye."

"So what if I'm..."

"An eikon?" The laugh rang off the walls. "Wouldn't that be something for Garlemald to shove in its exhaust pipes. The Eikon-Slayer turning against her own." E'dolha kept her eyes on the woman only a few inches away, trying to figure out how that kind of revelation would even sit with her. "Were you one of them, Zenos wouldn't once have had the upper hand on you." From this distance, she could see the difficulty the other woman had just calling him that.

"That isn't the point," she returned, ready to bring the actual issue to light. She'd hoped her wife smart enough to figure it out without it being directly spelled out. "I don't care how powerful I am. I don't care if my strength comes from the thing I've devoted my life to driving away. Primals _temper_ people," she said, her voice breaking on the last word as her hands finally unclasped and landed palm-up in her lap.

She let the words hang in the air.

"Everyone I've ever cared about," she continued. "Every good thing I've ever had. All the people around me who met death. Our _family_ ," and her head hung and her eyes shut and her lips pressed together while her tail finally fell limp on the bed. A shaky breath pierced the silence; she couldn't hold herself back from crying anymore. "The reason we're married. The reason we have Lhondi. What if all of it is because I'm... tempering people?" Because she was the Warrior of Light and people would do anything for her.

More quiet but for sniffling and sobbing and the subtle, uncomfortable shifting of bodies, none of which abated when E'dolha felt a soft, gloved touch on her shoulder.

"You daft fool." The Warrior of Light's head tilted upward very, very slightly. "I can't speak for the others, but we fought the Lady of Bliss together. You needed me there _because_ I can't get tempered." And she heard her wife's tone drop not just in volume but in sarcasm, in playfulness, in its cutting quality, leaving all of it behind for a rare moment of sincerity. Fingers brushed pink hair away from her ear just to make sure it got through properly. "I fell for you because I wanted to."

And E'dolha's body froze like a lever slowly being pulled backwards to divert an oncoming mine cart, and it took her a moment to remember how to switch tracks. Her body turned, her arms wrapped around her wife, and she buried her face against her neck in a frankly embarrassing display of affection. The tears streaking her cheeks wouldn't stop flowing so easily, but she could at least pretend they were out of happiness. Somehow, the woman she'd spent every day of the past three years with knew exactly what to say to make things... better. Not forever. Not permanently. But for now.

And "for now" was the best that most of them could hope for in this world. Lyse and the resistance were safe for now, until the Garleans moved forward with their inevitable plan to flood Rhalgr's Reach with Black Rose. Ishgard stood at peace with dragonkind for now, until some ancient beast broke rank amidst the chaos caused by Nidhogg's death and sparked war anew.

Fordola rem Lupis and E'dolha Tiasen and their daughter Lhondi could enjoy peace at home for now, until the call drew E'dolha to the First once more.

These moments of peace, the... time between the seconds, she supposed, made everything else worth fighting for. Hydaelyn was a primal. Hydaelyn had always been a primal, and no amount of crying or despair would change that. Whether this meant that E'dolha herself was an avatar of Hydaelyn or simply enthralled by her didn't matter nearly as much as she wished it did. She couldn't change it. She couldn't change the truth, even if she didn't have the truth yet.

"You're closer to Susano if you are one."

E'dolha pulled herself away after another pause, and through reddening eyes and a tear-stained face, she almost smiled. All the god of the red kojin wanted was to revel in the thrill of battle. All the lord of the sylph wanted was peace for his people. Tempering was still... horrific; removing a creature's free will forever would never not be something that made E'dolha's blood run cold, but. If she had to be a primal, she hoped she was closer to those than to the Lady of Bliss or the shadow of the full moon over Doma.

"I liked him," she said, strange as it was to admit.

"And I like you, you bleedin' harecop."

And that was all it took for a smile to crack E'dolha's face. All her wife needed to do was remind her that they had each other (that they actually had a family together, that they were raising a child, that they both had something more to hang on to now) and it still took E'dolha by surprise for long enough to bring her out of her own mind for a moment, even years on. Another, better silence reigned while E'dolha wiped one cheek clean.

"I kept thinking of the night I took your collar off," she said, glad that the sentence actually had some context to it. It had been... gods. Three and a half years now? Something like that, E'dolha pretended. As though she didn't have the exact memory etched into her head strongly enough that her wife would have picked up on it if she hadn't already been there in the first place.

"Worked your nimble fingers to stop the crystal from taking my head off with it." Fordola nodded. "Still not sure how if the damn thing was meant to not do that, but you got the job done."

"When I woke up in an empty bed," and she saw her wife roll her eyes like she'd told this story dozens of times before (but that was barely going to stop her), "I thought that was it. I thought you'd be gone forever as soon as you tasted freedom again. I thought you'd take the longest malm you could and be rid of... all of this."

"And you thought I'd been tempered back then, did you?" Fordola cut in. "I still don't know why I stayed, but it sure as hell wasn't because you'd forced me to." A smile better suited her, and E'dolha could see the hints of one forming on her lips. "Maybe you found a way to convince me."

And, knowing _exactly_ what her wife meant, E'dolha pressed one palm to her shoulder and shoved her playfully. It wouldn't get a bright laugh out of either of them, not right now and maybe not ever, but the curve of Fordola's mouth made her chest lighter. "Stop it, gods," she teased back lightly. Gently.

"You've not found a way to make me in three years and you'll have no luck today."

"Fordola." And her hand moved, deliberate and careful, to remove the glove over Fordola's right hand, tugging by one finger, then two, then all of them until she could take it off and place it on the sheets. And her hand slid underneath Fordola's palm, her fingertips feeling the rough patches from a lifetime spent working towards liberation, until she grasped her wife's hand just as carefully. As though if she held too tightly, the moment would disappear forever. As though she wouldn't be able to return to this whenever thoughts like these rose to the surface once more.

"If you're about to—"

E'dolha shook her head while her fingers ran over the band Fordola wore. Simple, functional, symbolic. Nothing gaudy, nothing to draw attention. Nothing like the way E'dolha had once insisted on acting. How she would have insisted on showing her marriage only a handful of years ago, had she ever dreamed of eternal bonding in the first place. But Fordola rem Lupis was not the kind of woman to long for massive stones and white gold, and E'dolha hadn't had to speak a word to learn this about her. Treating her the way she preferred to be treated came second nature to E'dolha; she was the Warrior of Light and she would do anything for her.

"I'll send word to M'rahz," her wife spoke while E'dolha's attention stayed on the ring and the matching one on her own finger. "Tell him we'll be along shortly. Relieve him of his duties earlier than anticipated." And Fordola's hand moved up suddenly, gripped E'dolha's wrist gently and tugged her slightly closer. Close enough for their faces to nearly touch, but without the tension of battle behind it. "The rings mean that you'll not have to weather this alone. And I'll remind you of that as many times as it takes to get through that hunk of bone between your shoulders."

And dry, cracked lips brushed her own and the faint taste of spiced aldgoat meat came with it and her eyes closed and she could feel stress working its way from her body with every exhale through a nose that still wasn't prepared to take full breathing duty.

And just like that, her mouth was free again, though she wasn't going to be the first to speak. "We'll spend the evening here. The three of us. Put this from your mind for a while." A beat. "Aye, Dolha? D'you like the sound of that?"

E'dolha let out a long, quiet sigh and let her eyes open again, and though she couldn't force herself to beam, she knew she had no need. Her eyes fell on the woman who knew more than anyone else what trials the Warrior of Light had been through. The insurmountable weight on her shoulders, and the long road ahead of her in the unwritten future. One quiet night would do little to fight it all back, but that it was an option at all told volumes.

"Aye."

This would be enough. For now.


End file.
